


The Old Empire : Ikitai Jyn

by TheCandyMarwhal



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: also angst and sadness, oops lol, there's death mentions in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:46:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29225685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCandyMarwhal/pseuds/TheCandyMarwhal
Summary: The story of a rogue, trying to find his way in the world.





	The Old Empire : Ikitai Jyn

_ The young elf jumped back, almost flipping around an obstacle and holding up his short sword as the older elf sparring him came forward, swinging and just barely missing as the younger dodged to the side, laughing slightly.  _

_ This went on for several minutes, the elves getting blows close but never truly connecting until a female voice called to them. “Perris! Ikitai! I know you two have all sorts of important sword tactics to practice, but dinner will be cold if you don’t hurry!” Ravana teased, leaning against the doorway of their home, a small little farm in the south-eastern corner of the Myr Dorel territory.  _

_ Ikitai grinned, looking to his father and bowing slightly, sheathing his sword. “That was fun.” He remarked, a little breathless but excited. He was still young, even for an elf, maybe 17 summers now, but that didn’t stop his desire to train in swordsmanship like his father.  _

_ Perris bowed in reply to his son, sheathing his sword and stepping forward to clap him on the shoulder. “You have learned well, Tai, Very well indeed.” He chuckled softly, “Maybe one day you’ll land a blow on me.” Was his teasing remark as he pulled the boy close and ruffled his hair, one arm wrapped around his shoulders.  _

_ Ikitai let out a protesting sound that was full of laughter, gently batting at his father playfully as they walked towards the house.”I was almost hitting you today!” He complained, “It won’t be too long.”  _

_ “You say that, dear, but you are tired and your father is not.” His mother piped up as the two men entered the house, dinner on the table as promised.  _

_ The look that her son gave her made Ravana laugh, shaking her head as she leaned over to kiss her husband on the forehead, and then lightly tap her son’s nose affectionately as the males separated to eagerly go to their places at the table. _

_ And that was just how life was.  _

_ How it had been since Ikitai was born, just the three of them surviving, living, farming, being happy. The storms… were problems sometimes, but between his parent’s fighting skills and their knowledge of the land around them, they had been unharmed. Mostly.  _

_ Ikitai had been born fifty years after the founding of Myr Dorel, so this life was all he knew. He only knew the storms, the monsters that had been appearing with a greater vengeance, the creatures that made his mother shudder slightly when the fighters of the realm described them in the village.  _

_ He’d heard stories, of course, but it just seemed like far off tale he’d never grasp.  _

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_ Ikitai watched the burning pyre in almost a blank state, neither feeling sadness nor anger, just… emptiness. He stood by his father, the two of them the only ones who had come to watch, but that was reasonable since this Storm season had taken many. It was unsurprising that no one came. It didn’t mean he wasn’t a little bitter about it, but that was only because of how much his mother had done for the nearby village and others.  _

_ It had just been an unfortunate lack of judgment. _

_ Normally they were careful, especially during storm season, but these creatures were… much worse than before. _

_ So there had been very little time to move when a pack of them jumped the family. _

_ Ravana had fought off her beasts and rushed to her son’s side, helping the young man to beat back the creature, but Ikitai’s warning hadn’t come fast enough for her to turn and defend herself from the larger creature coming and sinking its claws into her back.  _

_ There was nothing Perris or Ikitai could do. _

_ They had bested the pack of monsters, but Ravana had lost too much blood by the time they rushed to her side _

_ She had died in her husband’s arms. _

_ And now it was just the two of them.  _

_ They stood there as the embers burned through the night, sending sparks to the heavens as their beloved wife and mother left them, going to rejoin the natural cycle.  _

_ Tai turned and went to go back inside once the fires had burned out, and all that was left was the ashes on the stone table, but his father gently grabbed his arm.  _

_ “Pack your things.” The older elf croaked out, voice cracked and dry. He had stopped crying hours ago, but his body had not recovered. “We leave for New Dawn once we have rested. I cannot- we cannot stay here. The memories, everything here is not… worth the pain.”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ For a moment, rage built up in Ikitai. He didn’t want to leave, he wanted to stay here, in this place that his mother had cultivated and grown for almost her whole life, to cherish it, love it, but… maybe that was why his father couldn’t stay. So he simply nodded, gently patting his father’s shoulder and then pulling away, going back inside their home to pack up and take his meditation.  _

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_ He disliked the city, the way it was always so busy and filled with people and noises and everything else that made him want to scream into the void that it was all too much. That it was not his home, that he didn’t belong here, that he belonged  _ **_home_ ** _ not here where all these people flocked and gathered. He  _ **_hated_ ** _ it here. _

_ He and his father had been here for almost ten years, and it still was no better than the day he’d come to this forsaken place. And the wife his father had taken, Nora… Ikitai hated her about as much as she hated him. The feeling was mutual and grew with each passing month. It had gotten better for a few months when his half-sister Sonia was born, the girl almost the spitting image of their father, except her ears were less pointed as a half-elf.  _

_ Ikitai loved that child with his whole heart, keeping an eye on her for their father when the older elf went off to work, and when the child’s mother went to work as well. It was a nice change from his normal work of guard duty or information gathering. He taught her Elvish and Common, all of the things he vaguely remembered learning from his parents, counting, herbs like his mother had shown him, survival skills that the child would probably never need in the city.  _

_ And as she grew older, he taught her to fight and defend herself, something Nora found disgusting and unladylike for her daughter, but Perris approved, praising his son for his teaching and praising his daughter for how she caught on.  _

_ Perhaps that was when the tension between the eldest son and the second wife of Perris Jyn rose.  _

_ Sonia was about eight when her younger brother Leon was born, the boy a blend of his parents with barely pointed ears and deep brown hair instead of blonde like his sister and half brother, and Ikitai treasured him as much as his sister, already preparing to take on partial responsibility for the children. And he did, taking care of both of them while his father took mercenary jobs and his stepmother going back to her job as an alchemist.  _

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_ Two years had passed, and things had slowly gotten worse between Ikitai and his stepmother. She was staying home more now, something the young male thought was a good thing. It was good for her, good for her children, and good for him because he could get his life started more properly, become more independent for himself.  _

_ Nora had been home for weeks now, and honestly, he didn’t think much of it, wondering if she had just realized what she was missing and gone back to her children, to make up for them not having a mother since she was always off doing one thing or another for her work.  _

_ However, that early winter dawn felt… different.  _

_ Ikitai went to work, watching over the son of a not very important lord. He wasn’t exactly built like a proper bodyguard, taller and lithe rather than bulky and broad, but he was enough that it kept the pickpockets and thieves away.  _

_ Sunset came, and he was dismissed. He hurried back to the small room he was renting, changing out of his uniform into street-worthy clothes and only carrying a shortsword on his hip when he emerged. His father had sent word weeks ago that today was the night he’d be arriving back from, and Ikitai wanted to be there, eager to see his father and make sure he was well and safe.  _

_ He rounded the corner and walked up the path to his father and his wife’s home, and that was when that sense of dread washed over him again, causing him to pause and glance around with caution, a hand on his sword.  _

_ Something was wrong.  _

_ The door was barely cracked open, a bit of candlelight flooding onto the street, and the house was eerily quiet.  _

_ Sonia and Leon were  _ **_never_ ** _ quiet.  _

_ His eyes narrowed, and he pulled the hood of his cloak up, slipping into shadows and carefully scaling the trellis Nora had insisted on having ( and he had tried to tell her to not get it for this exact reason ), and settled on the roof, hesitating before carefully lowering himself onto the ledge outside his father’s study window, and then pulling open the larger panes of glass, the only ones in the house really, and slid inside, dropping almost silently to the floor and standing. The room seemed intact, and he glanced to where his father kept the papers and things of importance, and once he was satisfied it wasn’t disturbed, he crept forward, body low and hand still on the hilt of his sword.  _

_ Ikitai peaked in Sonia and Leon’s room, eyes narrowing as the room seemed messier, and oddly… vacant. The toys that belonged to both of them were missing, and the two small chests at the end of their beds were open and empty, both clothes and personal items that Sonia had.  _

_ This was wrong.  _

_ His grip tightened on his weapon, and he slunk down the hall towards the stairs, silent. He paused after a moment to listen, head tilted to the side, eyes closed for a moment. He didn’t hear that much at all, just very faint rustling, and an almost wheezing sound. Instantly, he straightened his shoulders and took cautious steps, descending as quietly as he could until he reached the landing before he froze in shock and horror, staring at his father, the elf slumped on the opposite wall and bleeding from a stab wound in his chest.  _

_ The young male staggered slightly and then darted over, crouching beside the male and whispering a soft ‘Father?’, reaching to pull his scarf from around his neck and place it over the wound. “What happened? Where are the children, and Nora?” He murmured and tried to put more pressure on the area, looking tense as the blood just kept seeping through the fabric.  _

_ The only answer he got from the elder elf was a wheeze, blood starting to trail down from his lips a little bit. He coughed weakly, then looked behind and breathed out a soft “Tai.”. His body tensed slightly, and he twitched his sword arm like he wanted to swing but didn’t have the strength anymore or his weapon.  _

_ That was enough for him; Ikitai turned and came up into a ready position with his blade extended, eyes widening with a surprised shout as his stepmother lunged at him, swinging his father’s sword with a ferocity that rivaled that of a seasoned fighter’s. He dodged to the side, blocking another swing and trying to get a better look at the small woman before him, eyes narrowed slightly, “Nora, what are you doing?” He tried to ask, ducking another sloppy swing from the woman.  _

_ The only answer he got was a hiss of something and the woman just kept swinging, wide and uncontrolled as she pushed him back towards a corner, her breaths labored as she did so.  _

_ And all he ever did was block the blows, trying to get a better look at her as he kept backing away from her. “It’s me, Ikitai, come on-” He tried again, trying to use one of his parries to push her away from him, desperately. “What’s going on, what’s happening, where are the children, Nora-”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Honestly, his speaking just seemed to make her more upset and she let out another snarl and a more furious swing, faster than before, and clipping his arm in the process, blood dripping from the wound as the young elf staggered back.  _

_ He looked between his arm and the woman in shock, eyes wide as blood started dripping from the wound, and then he gazed back to his stepmother, and he shifted his blade to block another blow. He just kept the sword out, dodging the wild swings and trying to block them as he backed up. “Nora-” He started, before breaking off as the woman suddenly just surged forward, and impaled herself on the sword, making the young elf freeze.  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “What-” He breathed, kind of letting go of the blade and taking a step further back. “What have you done?”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Nora just let out an almost deranged laugh and grabbed the hilt to push it further into her torso and almost through herself with a grunt of pain, smiling  _ _ maniacally. She slowly sunk to her knees, still holding the blade in her and almost twisting it as she did. “No one will believe you.” She hissed, “They will think you did this. And your life will be over. My children will be the only ones they see for the Jyn family. They will live on; be the only ones and you will rot. And  _ **_my_ ** _ children will take everything.” _

_ Tai’s eyes widened, “What?” He whispered, “You wanted to do this for… but why!? I didn’t want to take anything from Sunny or Lee, or my father in that way. I wanted to work on my own. Earn my own way. I didn’t want to take anything from them or my father.”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ She just kept giggling. “You say that, but you would have gotten everything. You would have outlived them both and so would your father, and that is unacceptable. My children must inherit what your father has. They  _ **_have_ ** _ to.” She started to collapse over to the side. “And now they will.”  _

_ He kind of growled slightly and dropped to his knees beside her, grabbing a cloth from a nearby overturned table and placing it over the wound. “Where are my siblings? Where did you take them?” He asked, desperately “Just tell me, please.”  _ __   
  


_ The woman just bared her teeth in a smile. “Far away from here.” She wheezed before she kind of coughed and let out a low breath, her eyes closing as her body started to shut down.  _

_ “No no no no-” He pleaded, still trying to stop the bleeding. “Please, come on, please!”  _

_ He stilled as her body went fully limp, blood pooling beneath her.  _

_ Slowly, Ikitai pulled his hands back, staring at them and then standing to go to his father, before he stopped, staring at the older elf as it registered that during the struggle, his father had slipped away, eyes closed and he looked almost… peaceful.  _

_ He exhaled slowly, glancing at his blade in the woman before him, and then turning and striding through the kitchen and out the back door, closing it behind him almost silently and just keeping to the shadows as he returned home. He wiped his hands off of most of the blood, shoving what was important and relevant into a small bag, and the copies of documents his father had given him, in case something happened to the originals. He sighed, shaking his head as he pulled his cloak on and tugged the hood up over his head, just keeping to the shadows and slinking out of the district, out of town.  _

_ She was right. The authorities would never believe he didn’t kill his father and stepmother and send his siblings away. The fact that she was killed with his blade solidified that, even if he didn’t strike the blow. Even if she was mad, she was also extremely smart.  _

_ However, he had a bigger task now.  _

_ He had to find his siblings, wherever Nora had sent them.  _

_ And if he had to search the whole continent to do it, he would.  _

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_ Months passed, and even though he scoured the city, there was no sign of Sonia or Leon, and Ikitai was running out of funds, so when he picked up a discarded letter addressed to ab ‘Illias Elmyar’ from the  _ _ Ruin Delver's branch of the Adventurers Guild of New Dawn, he took it as a sign of… something. Hope, maybe? It would allow him to travel and earn coin, and surely they couldn’t take all of his time, so… perhaps this could work.  _

_ He could be Illias. He could make this work. He’d find his siblings, and then try to clear his name, so he could raise them properly.  _

_ That was it. _

_ If it meant being a Ruin Delver… so be it.  _


End file.
